MPP LCVX

This was another slightly weird one for me: nobody staying for the weekend means I’m getting packed up at home on my own on a Saturday morning before heading down to open up the hall. Ali had let me know that they were going to be late as his car had developed an issue on the motorway, so they’d had to go back and swap cars and drivers…

Thankfully Chris was waiting in the car park when I got there so I had some help setting out the tables and chairs… to be fair, he probably ended up doing most of it while I wandered down to the shops to grab some milk and soft drinks… he's younger and stronger than me!

The gang didn’t take long to start arriving and by the time the lads from London pulled in, we had a goodly mob – there was bantering, a little puzzling and a bit of catching up with folks we hadn’t seen since last year. James had sent his best wishes to everyone, unable to attend as he’d done his back in, and Simon was keeping his carbon footprint low and just sent his best wishes.

Kevin had rather kindly brought me some puzzles that Tye had shipped over in a package to him – ta both - and Michael gave me a copy of his latest symmetry puzzle which I’ve only half-solved. Reminiscent of Bitten Biscuits, it consists of three partial circles with four round holes spread across the pieces. Your symmetry needs to include those holes and there are two distinct solutions… I’m usually absolutely rubbish at symmetry puzzles, but I did manage to find one of the solutions… more Think (c) required.

Dan and I had both had the same idea and printed off a large pile of Bram’s Hinged Cubes to give away. Pretty much everyone ended up taking at least one copy and spending a while playing with them. Not a single person just folded it together into a cube and pronounced it easy… most people managed to eventually fold a cube, usually via several visits to the not-a-solution, and everyone ended up wondering why it was so darned difficult. An experiment that continued back at the house later on, with some more serious attempts at analysis – Bram’s Hinged Cube provided without a doubt the largest amount of puzzling at MPP LCVX! (Thanks Bram for making it available on Printables!)

Amy had brought along her copy of Andrew Crowell’s QuantumTIC and she was in two minds about the elegance of some of the moves and she sought further opinions from folks who hadn’t already solved it… she duly got several folks views and the consensus was that she was the only dissenting voice and that it was indeed a brilliant puzzle! (It's probably the first time she's ever been wrong though.)

The Monkeys had brought along a copy of their latest not-quite-ready-for-distribution design and a few folks had a bit of a play with them – although nobody was stupid brave enough to try taking any of them apart. There was a bit of a chat about the feasibility of nesting them, but that’s probably worth a separate blog post.

Andrew Coles sidled up to me at one point and offered me a copy of his latest Puzzle Lock – which I think I’ve previously seen as a bit of a prototype – cash changed hands and a neat white box was dropped into my crate to take home… no doubt that will feature in a separate blog post shortly too…

I’d taken the Karakuri Christmas presents along for folks to fiddle around with and they all managed to raise a smile as several folks worked their way through all of them in turn – yet again they really are pitched at a lovely level of difficulty: none of them are trivial, most are really fun to solve and they all look smashing! And if they weren’t already all sold out(!), I’d encourage you to sign up for them as they’re also great value for money!

I enjoyed playing with a prototype that Phil’s been fiddling with recently – I suspect I followed his intended solution path as I found myself doing some things I thought should be useful only to find myself slammed up against a brick wall, and when I glanced over at him, he was grinning broadly. That one’s going to be another lovely little puzzle when it’s ready…

Steve Ali had brought along a pile of oddly milled sticks that he reckoned could be “assembled” – so Rich and Chris took up the challenge and settled down at a quiet table and began trying to hold multiple sticks in various orientations dictated by the brief instructions that he'd rather thoughtfully provided. The first couple of attempts ended in a bit of a racket as the sticks fell on the table, but it didn’t take them long to complete the resulting Hybrid Burr. After that, Steve and I played a short game of chicken playing anti-Jenga with it, but we both decided discretion was the better part of something-or-other and left this majestic piece assembled.

I spent a while playing with a dexterity puzzle that Andrew had made for a friend – you’ll notice I didn’t say “solving” in there! At first glance it looked like a fairly exacting pure dexterity puzzle – only the more you played with it, the less you seemed to be able to do what you actually wanted to – and the more strange forces seemed to be trying to stop you… at this point Andrew took pity on me and talked me through some of what I was experiencing and how I could get around those hurdles – but I still couldn’t actually execute the steps required. A couple of minutes in his hands and the puzzle was indeed securely solved… confirming that I am rubbish at dexterity puzzles, particularly really trick(s)y ones! (Damn clever design from Andrew!)

One of the other puzzles that got quite a bit of playtime was Bicolor 1365 – a box-packing puzzle from Koichi Miura. I just loved the fact that there are 1365 solutions with the lid the wrong way around (i.e. colours not matching) and only a single solution to put the lid on the box with the colours matching… several people spent a while trying and mostly managed to find one of the many wrong assemblies – and one or two managed to deduce the unique proper solution – well done!

The pig rolls / kebabs were as good as they always are (although some managed to just miss out!), and the fish supper back at my plaice went down well. Yet more puzzling, including quite a bit do analysing just why Bram’s Hinged Cube seems so hard: no matter what your approach is, you seem doomed to fail.

Thanks to everyone who made MPP LCVX another one to remember!